an unrealised in Sofia collection of studies on Gogol (1932?): an attempt at reconstruction (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
This article is situated in émigré studies and tries to reconstruct a possible conceptual framework and creative history of the Collection of Studies on Gogol, which was being prepared for publication in Sofia in the early 1930s. I use in my research the "microscopic method" proposed and practiced by Professor Piotr Bicilli. My only source of reconstruction are Bicilli's published letters to A. Bem (1931-1934), as I have not discovered a manuscript of the collection or any other information about it until now. P. Bicilli started to collect articles in 1931 in Sofia, and A. Bem contributed to the initiative, working in Prague. The collection might have been planned as a festschrift on the occasion of upcoming 80th anniversary of N. Gogol's death (1932). Several participants in the Dostoevsky Study Seminar in Prague, which was highly appraised by Bicilli, were invited to contribute to the collection. Besides being a joint émigré project, the collection was declared as a common Russian-Bulgarian initiative, which involved scholars from the Sofia University. Collection of Studies on Gogol remained unpublished, and the formal reasons, for that were financial, but behind them we can see other reasons related to the capacity of "Russian Sofia" as an émigré centre and to the ability of limited number of adherents around Bicilli to withstand a publication that offers "new readings" and places Gogol between realism traditionally assigned to him and modernist interpretations. Quests and reflections around the Gogol Collection gave an impetus to studies of works of Gogol and Dostoevsky works and coincided with the most fruitful period in the field of literary studies in Bicilli's life-the first half of the 1930s, when he offered a conceptual model for the Russian literary history.
The Oedipal Struggle of Dostoevsky Toward Gogol
The Oedipal Struggle of Dostoevsky Toward Gogol, 2020
Throughout his literary career--including its early, middle, and late periods-- Fyodor Dostoevsky actively engaged with both the literary works and the figure of Nikolai Gogol in Russian literature. This is evident from examinations of Dostoevsky's letters, the notebooks for his novels, his own literary works, as well as his journalism. Equally important for the text presented here is a perusal of the critical and scholarly record about the influence of Gogol on Dostoevsky, both from accounts and criticism during the later writer's lifetime through to contemporary scholarship on this subject. In this dissertation, supported by Brown University's Slavic Studies department and defended there, I attempt to show that Dostoevsky both revered Gogol at certain times and even polemicized with him, engaging in an Oedipal rivalry, or struggle, with his most important predecessor. The result of this rivalry propelled Russian literature from the era of Gogol and Gogolian naturalism into the 'fantastical realism' of Dostoevsky's later works.
Lire en Europe. Textes, formes, lectures (XVIII-XXI siècle), 2020
What is the study of the reception of a great author by and within a social group? On the one hand, a discourse on the conditions of the reception, which may be described in terms of domination-submission, at least referring to what is perceived. On the other, a discourse on the specific stylistic features of certain textual structures and on the possible tactics of appropriation of those structures by the group. In studying the reception of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) by the peasant world, we draw from two types of sources: some re-elaborated versions of Gogol’s works made by popular authors for a peasant audience in the 1880s; the transcriptions of the verbal reactions of groups of peasants during the reading of Gogol’s texts, recorded by village schoolmasters in that period. In our research we try to shed light on the the pressures suffered by the peasants in taking possession of Gogol’s prose. At the same time, we highlight the resistance and the difference in meaning between what is proposed by Gogol’s text and what is made of it by the peasant reader. As a result, the image of Gogol’s work returned by peasants is not a simply mutilated, rounded down, inadequate image. It is a work in which the descriptions of nature, the metaphors and the similes tend to transform into a myriad of characters and micro-stories that intersect and intertwine in the plot designed by the author in a way that seems to educated observers apparently unexpected and incoherent..
From the Corners of the Russian Novel: Minor Characters in Gogol, Goncharov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky
2014
fundamental ways. Rebecca Stanton, who has been a mentor and friend for many years, is the most talented writing coach I have ever met: she never let me leave ideas halfexpressed, and always pushed me to develop my most interesting thoughts (even when I myself did not recognize what they were). Both Eric Naiman and Irene Delic read and commented on the article-length version of chapter four, and their encouragement, advice, and support has been invaluable. My work on this dissertation has been funded in part by several generous fellowships from the Harriman Institute. I am especially grateful for the summer funding I received from Columbia's Slavic Department, which allowed me to live, write, and research in Moscow for six months. I would also like to thank my Literature Humanities students who, with their enthusiasm, intellectual seriousness, and love of literature reminded me why the study of it is so important (no matter what one's projected career). And it is hard to imagine the last several years without the friendship of my colleagues and peers, Anna Berman,
Dissecting the Toad: Unpacking Shestov's Thought on Gogol Through Rozanov
Slavonica, 2012
The question of Nikolai Gogol’s (1809–1852) alleged ‘realism’ has a long history in Russian criticism, ever since the first responses to his art, including those of Vissarion Belinskii (1811–1848). From the last decade of the nineteenth century, this debate continued, but in most cases on the theological or aestheticized-existential-biographical ground characteristic of Russian Symbolism. Lev Shestov’s (1866–1938) scarce responses to Gogol seem to go in a different direction, restoring the immediate context of Gogol’s art, that is, its engagement with the Romantic philosophy of nature and its artistic representation. This article is an extensive commentary on Shestov’s thought on Gogol, and on its indebtedness to, and development of, Romantic aesthetics. Two detours of the commentary lead through Pavel Florenskii (1882–1937) and, particularly, Vasilii Rozanov (1856–1919), whose responses to Gogol are shown to deepen Shestov’s thought.
Philological Class, 2021
This article is aimed at defining the terms "fantasy" and "fantastic elements" from the point of view of fiction and finding its application in relation to N. V. Gogol's works. The main attention is paid to fantastic elements, their classification, as well as the way they are used in the literary text. The material for the analysis was the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol-Nevsky Prospect, the Nose and the Portrait. In this study we use the typological method, with the help of which the common generic features of literary phenomena typical of the fantasy are studied, and their application in the course of analysis. The biographical method helps to reveal the connection between N. V. Gogol and his works filled with fantastic elements. The poetical-structural analysis of the text was undertaken to find intertextual and typological connections between the means of expression in the text and to identify fantastic elements in the selected stories. In the end of the article, the results of the work are summarized and the main conclusions are formulated. On the basis of literary works devoted to the theoretical definition of the terms fantasy and fantastic elements, we came to interesting conclusions. In the story of Nevsky Prospect, we can observe a philosophical and fantastic type of convention. The nature of the story Nose can be attributed to satirical conventions, and in the story the Portrait we can find both philosophical and mythological conventions. In our analysis and interpretation of all of the selected stories, the theme of the characters' duality was substantiated, which had been emphasized in relation to these works by the literary critic J. Dohnal, whose conclusion we agree with. Among other things, we have found that all three selected stories of Gogol are connected by another important link that contributes to the expression of the fantastic in them, namely, a dream, which plays a special role in the work of this writer.
Филологический класс, 2021
This article is aimed at defining the terms "fantasy" and "fantastic elements" from the point of view of fiction and finding its application in relation to N. V. Gogol's works. The main attention is paid to fantastic elements, their classification, as well as the way they are used in the literary text. The material for the analysis was the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol-Nevsky Prospect, the Nose and the Portrait. In this study we use the typological method, with the help of which the common generic features of literary phenomena typical of the fantasy are studied, and their application in the course of analysis. The biographical method helps to reveal the connection between N. V. Gogol and his works filled with fantastic elements. The poetical-structural analysis of the text was undertaken to find intertextual and typological connections between the means of expression in the text and to identify fantastic elements in the selected stories. In the end of the article, the results of the work are summarized and the main conclusions are formulated. On the basis of literary works devoted to the theoretical definition of the terms fantasy and fantastic elements, we came to interesting conclusions. In the story of Nevsky Prospect, we can observe a philosophical and fantastic type of convention. The nature of the story Nose can be attributed to satirical conventions, and in the story the Portrait we can find both philosophical and mythological conventions. In our analysis and interpretation of all of the selected stories, the theme of the characters' duality was substantiated, which had been emphasized in relation to these works by the literary critic J. Dohnal, whose conclusion we agree with. Among other things, we have found that all three selected stories of Gogol are connected by another important link that contributes to the expression of the fantastic in them, namely, a dream, which plays a special role in the work of this writer.
"Over Gogol Again": The Russian Formalists, Andrei Bely, and Mikhail Bakhtin on Gogol's Humor
AATSEEL, 2018
The “convex,” palpable, and multifaceted style of Gogol had mesmerized twentieth-century literary theorists. More than most other “classics,” he was a perfect case in point for the theorists as unalike in their beliefs and values as Andrei Bely, the Opoyaz Formalists, and Mikhail Bakhtin. For the Formalist Boris Eikhenbaum, Gogol’s manner was ideal to illustrate skaz, i.e., a special way of telling the story with the voice that is not neutral but, on contrary, is so peculiar that it constitutes another character in that story. Eikhenbaum’s aim was to show how Gogol’s special way of telling the story by merrily alternating masks, tragic and not, laid bare the fundamental playfulness of art as such. This vision of art was the reason why, while writing about the tragic and the comic as equivalent in “The Overcoat,” Eikhenbaum ultimately diminished the importance of the tragic element (which, according to him, shielded the sentimental readers from the artistic essence of the work, which had allegedly emerged from Gogol’s inner drive to wordplay). That is why Eikhenbaum and his fellow Formalists seem to have championed Gogol’s humor at the expense of the noble and humane tendency ascribed to him by others. The Formalists’ major opponent, Mikhail Bakhtin, conversely, focused on this tendency with regard to Gogol’s humor. In emphasizing the final cause of Gogol’s humor, Bakhtin had been anticipated by Alexander Slonimsky, who, despite his use of the Formalist terms, also spoke about the butt of the joke in Gogol. Andrei Bely, interestingly, did not want to dwell on the subject of Gogol’s humor and discussed his style instead. Yet this was not done to slight humor in Gogol; on the contrary, Bely wrote: “[I]t can be said about Gogol’s humor: it is all; it is everywhere; therefore, is it humor after all?” This leads me to a tentative conclusion. Despite Bely’s penchant for philosophy and Eikhenbaum’s principled decision to avoid it in scholarship, they have one thing in common. Gogol’s humor mattered to them structurally, and this structural understanding made the comic in Gogol’s humor less important to them. Unlike Bakhtin or Slonimsky, humor was a matter of formal cause for Eikhenbaum and probably for Bely as well. To what degree it was and what is at stake when formal cause is opposed to final—these are the issues tackled in my paper.